By Samuel Burke, CNN
The clock continues ticking down in a tense and deeply divided Egypt.
Egyptians are set to vote on the controversial new constitution this weekend.
Opposition leader Mohamed ElBaradei told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Monday that the groups opposing the constitution are still considering their response.
“We will either boycott or vote no,” he said, calling the entire process illegitimate.
Morsy aide: Small group behind demos
Elbaradei was director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency and won the 2005 Nobel Peace Prize for his work.
With the army in the streets, tanks surrounding angry protestors and cinder block barriers walling off the presidential palace, Egypt is looking more and more like it did in the final days of Hosni Mubarak’s rule.
ElBaradei said he wants to avoid head-on clashes, but was unyielding in his description of President Morsy.
“This revolution was not staged in order to replace one dictator with another,” he said.
For ElBaradei, the protests are about nothing less than whether Egypt will be a religious or a secular state. Either Egypt is wholly secular or it will “have a new dictatorship with a religious flavor.”
Morsy, ElBaradei said, should postpone the referendum on the constitution for several months, until the president is able to engage in further, meaningful dialogue with the opposition and the country comes to a “national consensus.”
Women’s rights, freedom of belief and freedom of expression are not guaranteed in the proposed constitution, ElBaradei said, though Morsy’s aides maintain that the document largely maintains the status quo of the Mubarak era.
ElBaradei disagrees. “Either we are going forward and catching up with the 21st century or we are going back to the dark ages,” he said.
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